Juli wrote:Yeah. I've done the math and, if I'm understanding how +scaling gems work, then with 99 in a scaling stat and a weapon with 0 scaling in any stats, a +scaling gem will be on-par with a +% damage gem of equal strength. In any other case, +% damage is just better.

So since there are 0 weapons with no gem slots and no scaling, +scaling is literally never worth using under any circumstance, while a +% damage gem of equal strength is available.

I can see it maybe being useful if you want to give the Blade of Mercy some strength scaling or Logarius' Wheel skill scaling. Maybe if you had 50 in both strength and skill, you'd get more out of Logarius' Wheel with sharp gems than you would with tempering gems?

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Juli wrote:Yeah. I've done the math and, if I'm understanding how +scaling gems work, then with 99 in a scaling stat and a weapon with 0 scaling in any stats, a +scaling gem will be on-par with a +% damage gem of equal strength. In any other case, +% damage is just better.

So since there are 0 weapons with no gem slots and no scaling, +scaling is literally never worth using under any circumstance, while a +% damage gem of equal strength is available.

I can see it maybe being useful if you want to give the Blade of Mercy some strength scaling or Logarius' Wheel skill scaling. Maybe if you had 50 in both strength and skill, you'd get more out of Logarius' Wheel with sharp gems than you would with tempering gems?

A top tier scaling gem will, at best, raise 0 scaling to E scaling. It's not efficient because you increase scaling from a single stat whereas a percent gem doesn't give a damn and automatically draws from a larger pool of AR. Unless these scaling gems multiply together like the percent gems do, they will be outclassed from 0-99 on every single weapon. The only exception I see for this is when you use a low-base-AR weapon that scales very poorly on the stat you have invested in (ex BoM on a Str build). Even that might not be enough to make it competent since we have flat gems that are probably better anyway

Dmg efficiency ratios for this gem combo are 1.045UTF and 0.74TF. The scaling gems MIGHT be able to overtake the percent gems at 99s, but no sooner than that and doubtfully at all. In order to outdamage the percents at 50 in your primary damage stat, the scaling gems would probably have to be around 29-32, which would be an abyssal gem that does not exist as far as we know, and would have to multiply together. They are simply additive, so the +45AR I got on my 50/10 LW+10 with the 27.2 scaling gem would net me 135 physAR if I had 3. Multiply that AR by about 1.05 and you get your approximate damage increase. For reference, I did 725 damage per r1 with 3 27.2% gems, so those scaling gems are looking dismally underwhelming.

Coefficient is the number that the various letter grades stand for.Saturation is the % of total damage you're getting from a scaling stat. I.E., at 0 Strength, you'd have 0% scaling saturation, while at 99 Strength you'd have 100%.

Coefficient1/Saturation1 is for the first scaling stat, and Coefficient2/Saturation2 is for the second scaling stat, assuming there is one.

So basically, a scaling coefficient gives you a percentage of your base damage as a bonus. E.G. Kirkhammer has a 100 Str scaling coefficient, which means if you have 99 strength, you get +100% base damage (in this case, +210).

Basically, +% damage effectively gives "+% ALL AR of a given type". If you have 210 base AR + 210 bonus AR, you get +27.2% of 420 AR. Meanwhile, by increasing the scaling of a weapon, you are effectively giving your weapon "+x% BASE AR of a given type, and only if you have 99 in the stat you are applying a scaling gem to." So if you have 99 Strength and have 210 + 210 AR on your Kirkhammer, applying a +scaling gem means you get +27.2% of 210, rather than of 420. So in order for a +scaling gem to compete with a +%damage gem, you need:

-0 bonus AR from scaling from any stat for the given damage type on on the weapon you're putting it on.-99 in the stat that the gem increases the scaling of.

And even if this were possible, you run into what Astrichthyes pointed out, which is that +scaling stacks additively, while +% damage stacks multiplicatively! Even if you had a theoretical weapon with 0 scaling in any physical stats, and gave it a +scaling gem, it would merely be on-par with +% damage gems if you had only 1 slot, and then fall behind as you unlocked more slots!

It's possible that I'm completely misunderstanding the way +scaling gems work, but I've seen no evidence that they work any differently than how I illustrated above. I am fairly sure that +scaling gems are Strictly Worse than +% damage gems and should never be used as long as you have access to equally powerful +% damage gems.

Coefficient is the number that the various letter grades stand for.Saturation is the % of total damage you're getting from a scaling stat. I.E., at 0 Strength, you'd have 0% scaling saturation, while at 99 Strength you'd have 100%.

Coefficient1/Saturation1 is for the first scaling stat, and Coefficient2/Saturation2 is for the second scaling stat, assuming there is one.

So basically, a scaling coefficient gives you a percentage of your base damage as a bonus. E.G. Kirkhammer has a 100 Str scaling coefficient, which means if you have 99 strength, you get +100% base damage (in this case, +210).

Basically, +% damage effectively gives "+% ALL AR of a given type". If you have 210 base AR + 210 bonus AR, you get +27.2% of 420 AR. Meanwhile, by increasing the scaling of a weapon, you are effectively giving your weapon "+x% BASE AR of a given type, and only if you have 99 in the stat you are applying a scaling gem to." So if you have 99 Strength and have 210 + 210 AR on your Kirkhammer, applying a +scaling gem means you get +27.2% of 210, rather than of 420. So in order for a +scaling gem to compete with a +%damage gem, you need:

-0 bonus AR from scaling from any stat for the given damage type on on the weapon you're putting it on.-99 in the stat that the gem increases the scaling of.

And even if this were possible, you run into what Astrichthyes pointed out, which is that +scaling stacks additively, while +% damage stacks multiplicatively! Even if you had a theoretical weapon with 0 scaling in any physical stats, and gave it a +scaling gem, it would merely be on-par with +% damage gems if you had only 1 slot, and then fall behind as you unlocked more slots!

It's possible that I'm completely misunderstanding the way +scaling gems work, but I've seen no evidence that they work any differently than how I illustrated above. I am fairly sure that +scaling gems are Strictly Worse than +% damage gems and should never be used as long as you have access to equally powerful +% damage gems.

This is absolutely correct. I simply pointed out BoM because it has 0 str scaling and is an example of a weapon it MIGHT work on. Regardless of whether it is on-par with a percent gem, it's still an inferior choice because it does not multiply AND it's harder to get them. In other words, it's no more than white noise when you're farming. It disappoints me that they didn't multiply because they may have actually stood a chance of outcompeting the percent gems since they have about 5% higher damage efficiency and would retain equal scaling on a single-stat weapon, making them slightly better, and would only continue to be better with additional stat investment because of that higher efficiency ratio.

phero wrote:Astrichthyes, have you been able to test your blunt setup yet?

yes, and the damage is a little higher, but I only have 2: +30.4% and +31.5%. Honestly, the only thing I don't like about the Logwheel is that the 1h attack modifiers are lackluster compared to the other strength weapons. Barring the charge attack, they are all relatively low, so the wheel will probably not do quite as much damage as Kirk by my estimations. +flats actually seem to be doing better on my pure strength than my split, but i haven't been able to test in PvP due to a mysterious lack of opponents. The adversarial SRRC has yielded no results thus far and hizzngr3 was empty when I last checked

@Juli: here's a little math to back up what you said. Let's just say we have a hypothetical cannon that has 3 slots and 0 scaling. That gives you 600 base AR. Let's also say the maximum scaling and maximum bloodtinge gems both max out at 28.

If scaling gems multiplied together, the AR would be the same as the percent gems, but the damage would be multiplied by 105%. At 1:1 efficiency on the percent gems and 1.05 on the scaling gems, it would look like this:

600*(1.28^3)(1.05) =1321 effective AR

If a weapon had less than 5% scaling off of their base damage, less than 2 scaling stats, and the scaling gems multiplied together, the scaling gems could outclass or equal the effectiveness of the percent gems. The only way they would be better is under these conditions, which do not exist in this game, therefore these gems are completely obsolete. Perhaps From will change this in the future. Having such gimped gems is never good for a game like this. They might as well not exist so that the drop rate for the other gems is better.

I found a 23.6% nourishing gem from the watchers in izs, which should change things a little bit for the Logwheel if they are farmable in Pthum as well. Calculating 3 of these stacked, the multiplier should be 1.888.

30/25 Logwheel+10 with 3 of these top-tier nourishing gems will have approximately 613 physAR and 120 arcAR in the UTF state. As for the TF state, I don't know if my approximated AR's are accurate, but the wheel would have 390P+498A. Rev that 4 times and you're gonna hit like a loaded freight train with about 700 arcAR. This is, of course, assuming that my estimations are correct or close.

So, after fooling around a bit in hizzngr3 today, I'd like to discuss the Logwheel and how it compares to the other strength weapon it's often paired with: the Kirkhammer. Both are admittedly good in their own respects, but what makes the Logwheel pale in comparison to the Sword in the Stone in most regards?

At 50s/13d/10a, the weapon AR's are:

Logwheel+10387P+51A

Kirkhammer+10396P

Looks like the two should be relatively equal, right? Now, let's add their respective top-tier physical gems

Logwheel+10 with three 32.6% blunt gems902P+51A

Kirkhammer+10 with three 27.2% physical gems816P

Looks like the Logwheel has a nice edge on the Kirk based on this stat sheet, right? Now, let's consider effective AR's after moveset multipliers

In all but the run R1's, a plain-phys-gem TF Kirk will outdamage an all-blunt-gem Logwheel, sometimes by a huge margin. It's quite shocking that the AR for the 1h sword is similar or higher than a lot of the attacks the Wheel has because the weight class is so different. Why the discrepancy? Perhaps the wheel was meant only to be a joke. Or, perhaps the weapon was not compared to the other weapons in the balancing process and therefore forgotten. Theoretically, based on the weight this weapon has to it, the speed of most of its attacks, and the short range it has, it should deal considerable damage. That charged R2 is unreasonably weak compared to the Kirk's and has no follow-up attack. In other words...

This weapon may have no business being in this game since it is so gimped compared to its competition. It's fun to play, but I don't think it's as competitive as most of the other weapons. Maybe it'll get a moveset multiplier buff.

One thing you're not mentioning is the fact that the 1H wheel still allows you to shoot vs a 2H kirk. Although with blunt gems the viscerals would ofcourse be very poor in comparison. Also, the 1H wheel has great stunlock in pve vs the 1H kirk.

It's a shame the numbers turn out this way though. Given the speed of the move set, the 1H wheel should definitely do some more damage than a 1H kirk.

I don't think FROM intended the weapon as a joke. I do think that the combination of gems and different scaling mechanics make some weapons hard to balance for all levels. At level 100-110, the kirk is surely better. But how do things compare at level 200? What level does FROM have in mind when balancing?

Perhaps this is more of a pve weapon, for certain situations. In competitive pvp at 100-110 it's usefulness unfortunately might be limited to exploiting the 2H MHA's with flats.

In any case, let's hope FROM will look at scaling, gems and multipliers in the expansion or in a patch. Seems they didn't really think the numbers through too much (LHB as a prime example), or they just made things too complicated for themselves.

Astrichthyes wrote:So, after fooling around a bit in hizzngr3 today, I'd like to discuss the Logwheel and how it compares to the other strength weapon it's often paired with: the Kirkhammer. Both are admittedly good in their own respects, but what makes the Logwheel pale in comparison to the Sword in the Stone in most regards?

Dude if you ever need a punching bag / test dummy and im online shoot me a message and we will hook up. Im more than happy to take a beating in the name of science. I may be out of service for the next couple of days (PS4 died) but I should be back up and running soon.

AM180 wrote: cant be bothered to go into this for the millionth time or even punctuate my response

Slim Cini wrote:I have a complaint... how can the guy in the wheelchair get to all those different locations without suitable ramps and wheelchair access?

The wiki is, of course, inaccurate. Pisses me off, really. I have still been getting incredibly high numbers with the Kirk compared to the wheel and the 1h sword was quite literally hitting about as hard as the 1h wheel. To do so, the multiplier for the sword would have to be quite high. Testing was done in random pvp. I'd be happy to revise the calcs and will do so later, as I have work for most of the day. Shouldn't take long once I do.

I think a big part of the difference here is that the untransformed wheel is also a one-handed weapon. Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't Logarius' Wheel get hyperarmor on its attacks even in the one-handed mode? That's pretty good for something that still allows for an off-hand weapon like a gun, flamesprayer, or shield.

Tsmp wrote:I think a big part of the difference here is that the untransformed wheel is also a one-handed weapon. Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't Logarius' Wheel get hyperarmor on its attacks even in the one-handed mode? That's pretty good for something that still allows for an off-hand weapon like a gun, flamesprayer, or shield.

The Logwheel does have some hyperarmor in its UTF, but the window is small. It becomes much wider in the TF state, in my experience.

The plain-phys-gem TF Kirk should only outdamage an all-blunt-gem Logwheel with the charged R2. That charged R2 is much weaker than the Kirk's and has no follow-up attack, but it should hit quite hard. I honestly cannot say why the Kirk is outdamaging my wheel. Could it be that most of my hits with the Kirk are DH/CH and the Wheel just isn't scoring them as often, lending to the idea that the output is lower?

I'm quite encouraged to test the actual output each weapon will have against a naked runeless character in pvp. M3m, I may take you up on your offer to test if you are still willing. All I need to do is find my final 2 radial blunt gems, which may take a while.

Astrichthyes wrote: M3m, I may take you up on your offer to test if you are still willing. All I need to do is find my final 2 radial blunt gems, which may take a while.

No problem at all matey I just need to get my PS4 back. Its been slowely dying since December and now totally wont read any discs. I bought it second hand off of a friend of a friend who needed a quick sale but he is still paying it off on finance so it has gone back to the shop to be repaired / replaced. I have my characters on a memory pen (I was piggy backing off of his PS+ account as he bought a years sub so I thought it pointless for me to buy one on top of that). Im really hoping I don't have any issues with my save file (it will be the same account that they are being downloaded to but I different PS probably) like I have done with DeS previously. Lost 12 DeS toons and 30 each on DkS and DkS2.... TWICE!

AM180 wrote: cant be bothered to go into this for the millionth time or even punctuate my response

Slim Cini wrote:I have a complaint... how can the guy in the wheelchair get to all those different locations without suitable ramps and wheelchair access?

Astrichthyes wrote: M3m, I may take you up on your offer to test if you are still willing. All I need to do is find my final 2 radial blunt gems, which may take a while.

No problem at all matey I just need to get my PS4 back. Its been slowely dying since December and now totally wont read any discs. I bought it second hand off of a friend of a friend who needed a quick sale but he is still paying it off on finance so it has gone back to the shop to be repaired / replaced. I have my characters on a memory pen (I was piggy backing off of his PS+ account as he bought a years sub so I thought it pointless for me to buy one on top of that). Im really hoping I don't have any issues with my save file (it will be the same account that they are being downloaded to but I different PS probably) like I have done with DeS previously. Lost 12 DeS toons and 30 each on DkS and DkS2.... TWICE!

That was my situation back in July with my ps3. Lost hundreds of hours on DeS alone. 12 characters, fully decked out. Also lost my Tomb Raider save that was about 2/3rds in, my DkS saves, DkS2, Dead Space, the works. Turns out my hard drive was corrupted and the processor was failing. Fixed the HDD, but it still freezes every time my fiancee plays Skyrim

phero wrote:I could also help with testing if needed, though I won't be online until the 25th.

If you're available before I can test with m3m, that's fine. I'm not having any luck finding blunt gems in ag77rinb, so I don't know when I'll be able to test the fully decked out blunt wheel.

Edit: I've fought the MW's in ag77rinb at least 50 times and obtained only 1 blunt gem. -8.5%ATK. It's beyond frustrating to even try for these gems with them being that rare and having such an abominable curse floating around that loves to show up at the worst of times. I'm almost ready to give up and farm for blunt gems from the Undead Giants, even though I absolutely hate them because of the OHKO's on every single DH attack.

I'm still searching for those perfect blunt gems, but the RNG is not on my side. I decided to do a little damage testing with the gems I have. I went into NG++ recently, so my damage values may not match up, but the gemless tests should act as a control. I'll be comparing the standard TF Kirkhammer to the Blunt Logwheel.

Stats: 50s, 13d, 10a

No-gem testing:

Logwheel+10AR: 387P+51ADMG:320UTF324TF

Kirkhammer+10AR: 397PDMG:320TF

*Note that the 51ArcAR compensates for the 10 PhysAR advantage the Kirk has over the LW here.

Curiously enough, the Kirk has a lower damage efficiency ratio than the Wheel (0.89 vs 1.0). This suggests that the weapon retains less damage per AR because the moveset multiplier for the hammer is not 1.0 per TF r1. The LW could have higher efficiency because the multiplier for the UTF r1 is greater than 1. Another possibility as to why the LW has higher damage efficiency is because the defense value used to calculate damage may actually be the arcane def alone rather than both arcane and physdef. If this is the case, the LW is hitting a considerably lower stat without significant split-damage reductions, therefore netting a higher overall output per AR. This may not be the case in pvp, however, which is why i'll be testing it ASAP. If the LW takes a reduction from the arcane side that is greater than the actual AR of the weapon, it could actually detract from the physical side as well and result in abnormally low damage values. It would explain why I've never been able to hit very hard with it in pvp barring the flat gem setup and the anomalous high values you can get when you hit a vileblood with a heavy attack.

phero wrote:I'm available for damage tests, let me know if you still need anyone.

I had planned on testing with M3m, but if he is unavailable this evening, i'd be glad to take you up on that offer. I'd like to test two different gem setups for damage against a SL 100 character without armor and one with maximum blunt def armor (top hat, executioner chest, gasciogne gloves, executioner boots). Runes are not necessary, although it would be nice to see the difference in damage comparing vileblood vs non-VB. I'll be getting approximate damage efficiency on the physical side as well as some general damage highs and lows.

Arcane DR rune would be great for testing. You could figure out what % of damage is blunt vs. what % of damage is arcane in the TF mode by testing damage vs. a naked opponent with no runes, then testing vs. a naked opponent with 10% arcane damage reduction. Multiply the difference by 10 and that's how much of the damage is arcane.

Juli wrote:Arcane DR rune would be great for testing. You could figure out what % of damage is blunt vs. what % of damage is arcane in the TF mode by testing damage vs. a naked opponent with no runes, then testing vs. a naked opponent with 10% arcane damage reduction. Multiply the difference by 10 and that's how much of the damage is arcane.

The only reason i'm not sure this would work is because that damage reduction is unlikely to be a perfect 10%. It'd more likely be a little more because defs seem to have a flat reduction on top of the percentage. It's definitely worth looking at, however. I'll test it and make sure to share all of my data with my analysis. Thanks for the tip. I hadn't thought of it until you mentioned it.

Damage reduction is a straight %. Every 10 points of damage reduction = 1% damage reduced. Defenses are close to a flat reduction, but players only have physical defense AFAIK. Maybe they have other defenses, but if they do it's a hidden stat. In any case, I doubt armor/runes affect defenses at all.

Juli wrote:Damage reduction is a straight %. Every 10 points of damage reduction = 1% damage reduced. Defenses are close to a flat reduction, but players only have physical defense AFAIK. Maybe they have other defenses, but if they do it's a hidden stat. In any case, I doubt armor/runes affect defenses at all.

I'll give it a shot and see what happens. I highly doubt that they would give players 0 in elemdefs without armor, but you never know. It might be worth testing just to see. If players have no innate elemdefs, it could make the Logwheel deal much higher damage than it should when testing against a naked player, which makes the damage values very misleading and much higher than they should be. I'll be testing this with an arcane-gem'd weapon and record my results.

Alright, thanks to phero, I got some pvp testing done with the Logwheel. I'll be honest, i'm not happy with the results. All tests were performed against a naked SL110 character with 224 natural physdef.

I did tests with a flat gem setup, but they are not my primary concern at the moment. What does concern me is the Arcane and Nourishing setups. Here is my testing to find approximate efficiency of the arcane side of the wheel. Tests were performed under the same conditions as before, but with a 30/25 setup instead of the 50/10.

No-rune 30/25 group:

LW+10 with physical gems453P+64A310 UTF R1294 TF R1391 TF R2

LW+10 with nourishing gems454P+64A319 UTF R1440 TF R1568 TF R2

7% arcane lake 30/25 group:

LW+10 with physical gems453P+64A309 UTF R1286 TF R1381 TF R2

LW+10 with nourishing gems454P+107A318 UTF R1422 TF R1545 TF R2

Now, looking at the damage efficiencies, I get the following for the no-rune group:

The physical efficiency on this weapon is excellent. Almost a 1:1 for AR increases, as was seen in my pve testing. On the other hand, arcane is looking absolutely terrible. It seems the game is treating arcane AR's as if they are about half of what they really are and making further reductions from there. Given the efficiency of the ArcAR on the axe, I can confidently say that the damage you gain from that 51A on the LW is less than 21. In fact, it's probably less than 12. Looking at the reductions from the Arcane Lake 7% rune, we can approximate effective AR.

30/25 physical setup lost 1 damage in the UTF state from the rune and 8 damage in the TF state on the r1. That's a 6% loss in arcane damage. 30/25 nourishing setup, by comparison, lost 18 damage. if 18 damage is 6% of total damage, then we're looking at 300 damage originally. Now, if arcane is as bad as it seems, that 300 damage is about 600AR, which seems way out of line. It's all very confusing, but it doesn't seem like arcane is even remotely effective or efficient compared to physical equivalents. I don't even see a 50 arcane build with 4 revs doing an incredible amount of damage compared to the physical setup. And this is all without armor and runes! Given the fact that arcane reduction is so out-of-whack, i'd say that the only reason the hunter's tools are as bad as they are is because they have halved effective AR from the get-go and are further mitigated by runes and armor.